


Semiotics of Catastrophe

by alitbitmoody



Series: Tattoo ‘Verse [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, Eventual Fluff, M/M, Married Couple, POV Alternating, POV Third Person, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), Pre-Canon, Recovery, Separation Anxiety, Tattoos, mention of PTSD, mention of nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-17 22:23:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14840288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alitbitmoody/pseuds/alitbitmoody
Summary: Young Newton Geiszler is a disaster at tattoo aftercare. He gets better as he gets older.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Semiotics is the study of meaning-making, signs, symbols, their use and interpretation.

Newton Geiszler got his first tattoo in 2006 -- an understated stick and poke with a pot of India Ink, courtesy of his roommate's grandmother and the broken latch on her tool cupboard. Said roommate handled the inking, holding Newt’s arm against their shared desk in the biology lab under a magnifying desk lamp. He had made the transfer himself, hand-drawn letters inspired by the Pablo Ferro’s credit sequence in _Dr. Strangelove_ , scanned and printed on stencil paper:

Two words, seven letters: _FUCK WAR._  
  
Simple, effective, and low enough on his arm that the entire honors committee at MIT would be able to see it during his thesis defense.   
  
Luka waffled once it was his turn: recoiling when Newt approached him with the upgraded sewing needle, wrapped in cotton thread and dipped in blood red ink. Newt couldn't blame him really. He was 16 years old and soon to learn that his particular brand of "steady hands" was built for dissections and shredding guitar riffs, not body modification.

When pressed, he could also admit that his level of cleanliness needed some work.

He wrapped the wound in gauze and medical tape, but the lack of a professional artist meant a lack of professional insight. He felt this absence keenly when trying to find a consensus on just how often to wash up and change the dressings. Already on a late-semester spree of revisions and edits that left little time for sleep or showering, he panicked into leaving his brand new pride and joy untouched for almost three days.

Three whole days of coagulated sweat, sebum, and dubious chemicals before Maureen, the older, more level-headed grad assistant in the biology department, smacked him for being “out of his goddamn mind more than usual!”  
  
Afterward, he washed the inflamed area with antibacterial soap, covered the skin with lotion and fresh gauze. When his temperature spiked above 99 degrees, he managed to wheedle a prescription for Amoxicillin from the college medical center with minimal explanation.

Mild fevers and inconvenient scabbing aside, he was quite happy with the results. Happy with the dull ache where his skin was inflamed. Fascinated to watch as the wound scabbed over and his skin began to peel and flake reddish brown detritus all over the desk where he banged out his dissertation. The last remaining scab split open only once, during a rehearsal for his presentation, sending a trickle of warm blood down his wrist while he described the evolutionary biology of marine life in environments impacted by cataclysmic climate change.

In retrospect, he really should have waited to get it done until closer to the actual defense date. He also should have refrained from saying as much to Maureen, who smacked him even harder.  
  
\--

By 2022, Luka's jittery, faded letters had been eclipsed by Atticon in an art nouveau-inspired halo of yellow and orange. Universal trauma replaced by universal trauma. The kaiju that had rampaged through Seoul before being cut down by Cherno Alpha was about as well-received by the crew at the Tokyo Shatterdome as that first tattooed statement had been by MIT.

He wasn’t particularly bothered. The K-Science lab techs were cool about it, more or less; being scientists themselves, with all the subsequent appreciation for dual meanings, the semiotics of personal and worldwide catastrophe, and the idiosyncrasies of the people their specific field tended to attract.

With one (often literally) glaring exception.

“Are you going to be worrying that area for the duration of the meeting?” Hermann asked, dry enough to snap, after Newt had rubbed his shoulder against the back of the chair for the hundredth time. “Honestly, it’s like watching a bear against a tree.”

“Look at it this way -- it’ll probably distract the marshal from the research division budget we drew up,” he retorted, leaning back, still unable to reach the itchy spot through his bandage and two layers of clothing.

The tattoo underneath -- Onibaba, a reminder of small wonders and connections in the midst of unrelenting devastation -- had passed the initial stage of recovery that he liked to describe as the ‘world’s most awesome sunburn’ and progressed to the ‘purging liquids and dead skin cells’ phase. He had managed to give himself a quick sponge bath in the sink and change the dressing before coming down to the briefing and it was already irritated.

“What exactly is wrong with you?” Hermann asked.

“How long have you been dying to ask that question?” he replied, grinning at Hermann’s dark look. “New ink. I’m not supposed to be itching it.”

“Well, _stop_ then!” Hermann shouted.

“I can’t help it!” He shouted back. “The epidermis is healing itself from thousands of punctures and the entire area is flooded with histamines attacking the inflammation.”  
  
“Why would you get that done the day before a meeting?”

“It was _two_ days ago. Our funding just got cut again. Vladivostok and Lima are still smoldering from the last attacks. Is there going to be a time in the near future when there’s  _not_ a meeting?” He eyed the condensation on the outside of his iced coffee, longingly. “I’d stick my drink on it if I could reach. Or slap the skin next to it.”

“How would either of those things even begin to help?” he asked, reminding Newt that, of the two of them, he was the biologist.

“Cold water cools the swelling. And slapping creates new inflammation to distract from the adjacent stuff. I guess I could always just rock back _into_ the chair for a dual effect?” he said, testing it out before Hermann could reply.

He sat back firmly, slamming the irritated muscle into cold metal and rocking backwards onto the back legs of the chair.

“Huh. Hey, that’s not bad! You know, I used to do this in school all the time? Stimming was less distracting back then -- until they tested me into high school. Have you ever had a 12-year-old rocking in the back of the classroom when you’re trying to prep for the SAT?”  
  
Hermann gripped the back of his chair, stopping it from tipping back any further.

“For God’s sakes, _where is it?_ ”  
  
“Right shoulder blade.” he said, sitting forward until all four legs of the chair slammed into the concrete floor. “Thanks. You’re a pal.”

“Am I slapping or scratching?” he asked, scraping his own chair along the floor as he moved closer.

“Dealer’s choice, man. But if you scratch, try not to dig in too hard,” he said, leaning forward and turning slight away, leaving his back exposed.

Hermann’s fingers were cool through his shirt, light stroking over and around the targeted area instead of the blunt edge of rough nail beds Newt had expected. The relief of the itch being soothed was distracting enough for him to almost forget that it was Hermann doing it for him. Doing something nice. _For him_.

 _SLAP._  
_  
_ “Oh god!”

The impact, mercifully, missed his bandage completely -- Hermann’s attention to detail presumably had not permitted him to neglect the words ‘adjacent to.’ Still, the amount of momentum behind the slap was a shock, nerve endings vibrating with the impact.

“Did that work?” Hermann asked.

“Warn a guy next time,” he wheezed as the sting of a second slap rippled through him, followed by the cold damp of his coffee cup. “Hey! I said _warn me_! Don't drop my coffee."  
  
The dual sensation ran down his spine, settling in his groin area. Cold and then... distressingly warm.   
  
“Dr. Gottlieb?” the deputy marshal’s voice sounded positively aghast. “What are you doing?”

Newton’s outrage fled, replaced with laughter so loud, it covered Hermann’s stammered explanation. The latter finally sputtered a scandalized _“he told me to do it!”_ which made him laugh even harder.

\--

His right shoulder-blade healed quickly and, eight months later -- in another shatterdome in yet another country -- he wandered out into the Hong Kong night to get the left side done. Knifehead. For symmetry and consistency in a changing world with evolving threats. He had been prepared for the itching in another less than convenient spot -- the instant ice packs he now kept secreted all over the lab were a lifesaver. Changing the dressing, however, was a different matter altogether.

The gauze and tape of his ill-advised youth was long gone. The linework and color for his finished sleeve had been done in Tokyo, doused with witch hazel, patted dry, then wrapped with saran wrap and medical tape to keep out sweat and bacteria. Because of its size and location, the new one had been bandaged with a transparent film dressing, sealed in with medical adhesive.

"This will be better for your workplace setting," Dada, his new artist, had told him. "Leave it on for 48 to 72 hours. After, you can wash and change to a new dressing for two more days."

He could feel the edges of the dressing begin to peel upward at the start of day three -- the adhesive dried and tight on his skin where it had previously been molded to his body. He managed to ignore it until around ten o’clock,well after his shift was technically over and he should have excused himself to shower and sleep. No one in the lab was sleeping much these days, but by the time he made his decision, there was only one other person left in the lab.

“Hey, Hermann! I need a favor, buddy.”

“The last time I did you a favor, Dr. Geiszler--” his eyes widened, mouth abruptly shut. “What are you doing?”

Newt realized halfway through that he was unbuttoning his shirt. He turned his back, sliding his left arm out of the sleeve and folding back just enough of his shirt to reveal the overlapping dressings.

“I need you to grab the edges of my bandages and pull.”

He didn’t need to see it to know that he’d surprised him -- he could practically hear Hermann’s look of disbelief at a molecular level as he processed the statement.

“ _...pull?_ ”

“Pull. It’s in a really awkward spot, I can’t reach it on my own and I need to change it, come on.” Hermann’s wary approach was amplified by the erratic thump of his cane’s purchase on the lab floor. Newt could feel the back of his neck heating up. “Like _now_. Is something wrong back there?”

“Why is it filled with _fluid_?!” he gasped.

“Oh, sorry!” Newt laughed, relief flooding him. “I forgot to warn you about that -- it’s plasma and excess ink. It’s really only fluid for the first couple of days. The film is breathable, letting oxygen in while keeping dirt and other elements out. After the third day, the fluid part pretty much evaporates and just leaves kind of a grayish-green-black sludge behind.”

“That... is _unsanitary_ ,” Hermann said, voice grave and more than a little ill.

“Uh, it’s actually _very_ sanitary! It’s called wet healing, it keeps the area hydrated at a crucial point in recovery and it cuts down on the risk of bacterial contamination and infection by 50-75 percent! Now are you going to pull off for me or not?!”

That phrasing… was probably wrong, he thought. But it was three hours past the time when he should have been able to manage an articulate statement. Hermann’s only response to his awkward word salad was a snap of latex gloves. Newt rolled his eyes. He supposed it was fair enough, considering he’d just informed his lab partner that the “very sanitary” fluid he’d be coming into contact with was basically a marinade of Newt’s own blood.

“Thank you.” He felt the cool slide of his lab mate’s fingers before he heard the cane slam against the side of the table. “Hey, could you maybe do it quickly? I’m really not used to being half-naked in the lab, dude. My nips are getting cold--”

The bandages were ripped off with more vigor than he expected, provoking a shriek that echoed off the concrete ceiling of the lab and down the hall.

Hermann's dry heaving was nearly as loud.

\--

Newt found himself shirtless in the lab more frequently as the days progressed into weeks. As their work hours got longer and the transparent dressings progressed to quick washes and moisturizer with still more itching and peeling.

“Do you think you could possibly refrain from peeling your flaking tattooed skin so close to my table?” Hermann blurted out one night at two in the morning, after Newt had started up from a cat nap on the sofa and crossed the lab behind him to wash up.

The table in question was next to the hand washing area, little more than a repository for paper towels and extra boxes of latex gloves. Newt gave it a kick without thinking about it.

“It’s week three. I can’t really refrain from flaking tattooed skin _no matter where I am,”_ Newton said, giving one last scratch before shrugging back into his shirt. “Anyway, dude, why is it _your_ table? I don’t see your name on it.”  
  
“It’s on my side of the lab -- I daresay there’s no _need_ to put my name on it.”

“Well, you might as well -- I mean, it’s not like you ever actually _use_ it,” he shot back, focused on doing up his buttons and tucking his shirt back into his jeans. “Your holo-screens and notes and extra chalk are all on your desk. Your paperbacks and love letters to the ghost of Alan Turing are _on your other_  desk. And anyway, the hand-washing sink is on your side of the lab.”

Hermann glared, pointing at the industrial wash sink across the yellow line.

“ _This_ hand-washingsink is on your side of the lab. Unless you want me exposing open wounds to formaldehyde and kaiju blue--”

“ _Neutralized_ kaiju blue. And a tattoo ceases to be an open wound after the second week. You said--"

“I know what I said -- _gah,_ whatever, dude! Which one of us is the biologist again?!" he blanched. "It’s called lab safety. Read the handbook -- it's, like, nine pages of it.”

"Fine." Hermann sneered. “I’m almost more disturbed by the fact that you have to take your shirt off to peel it in the first place.”

“Don’t like it? Don’t look. There's a page for that in the handbook, too!" Newt shot back, already retreating to his side of the lab and the comfort of his dissection table.

He wanted to ask if ‘disturbed’ was really the word Hermann was looking for.

Instead, he found himself humming “The Stripper” the next time he rolled up to the sink. He barely got two buttons undone before he heard the bit of chalk slam down into the tray and the hurried thump of his lab partner stalking out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been more than ten years since Newton Geiszler's last tattoo. Less, if one is considering just how much of that time he was actually awake for.

_Wake up._

Hermann heard the voice in his head before he felt the blankets shift or the warmth pressing into his back. He smiled at the fingers in his hair and lips on his neck, all while an equally familiar warmth tugged at his mind, frenetic and engaging.

"Hermann… _Hermann..,_ ” Newt whispered, volume spiking as the sing-song tone in his voice died out. “Wake up. It's the start of a brand new year.”

“That… is precisely…. why I refuse to wake up,” he murmured, retreating towards Newt’s body heat and pulling his arm around him until they were properly spooned, the shorter man perched across his shoulders and back.

A breathless giggle puffed air across his ear, followed by a melange of imaginative excuses, half-heard through the veil of sleep ( _‘Hermann, I threw out your marmite,’_ _‘Hermann, there’s a fire in the cupboard and your cardigans are in danger...’_ _‘Hermann, I spilled kaiju blood on the piano… also I sneaked kaiju blood out of the lab and bought a piano.’_ ).

“Hermann...it’s morning!” Newt finally asserted.

“It’s our day off,” Hermann replied, eyes still closed. “It’s _everybody’s_ day off. The rest of the lab and the Shatterdome are sleeping off their own hangover, as we both should be doing.”

New Year’s 2036 had been quite the party -- as parties tended to be this side of a near-apocalypse. There had been drinking for celebration, drinking for tested nerves, songs of joy, songs of mourning. Some visiting family members of the crew had arrived the day before and passed around a cache of Western sweets and alcohol like they were contraband. He and Newton had tipsily retired to the roof of the Shatterdome afterward, stargazing and necking like teenagers before getting caught by _actual_ teenagers and subsequently slinking off to continue their _‘auld lang syne’_ in their private married quarters.

And now Newt was awake. Hermann sleepily wondered if it was something with his technique. If so, they had an entire day off to work on that...

He turned over, eyes blinking open, as his husband’s arm slid from his grasp. “Oi! Get back here at once.”

“Did you just say ‘oi?!’” Newton laughed, tugging his arm, only to be flipped on his back as Hermann followed, shifting so that his good hip bore his weight. “You can’t say _‘oi’_ \-- you went to Cambridge! Hermann, come on.”

“I _lectured_ at Cambridge, and I believe that means I can say what I like. Within reason.”

Newt grinned, despite his captivity. “Cheeky.”

“Why are you dressed? How are you even awake? It’s…” he blearily glanced at Newton’s digital watch, miraculously still on his wrist after last night’s festivities. “...half-ten. On a holiday. You’re never up this early when you don’t have to be.”

Never this early, unless there was a nightmare. But those were usually accompanied by night sweats, a shower and change of clothes. On those mornings, Hermann tended to wake up to the sounds of an anime marathon on Newton’s tablet or a note on his pillow. _‘Went to the lab.’_

The tablet was off, plugged in and charging on the night table. He braced an elbow against the mattress, stroking his fingers through his partner’s hair -- dry, some light pomade, a hint of sweat and smoke from the exhaust ports situated over the Jaeger bay (definitely no shower then).

Newt squeezed his hip, as though sensing this train of thought. “ _Atmest du, Schatzi. Bitte._. I slept just fine.”

“Have I missed something?”

“No,” he paused, almost sly. “Well, not yet.”

“ _Not yet_?” Hermann asked, coyly settling in, elbows on either side of the prone man’s head.

Newton’s smile faltered at the edges, hedging and apologetic. “So, I may have fibbed about my Thursday appointment. It didn’t run as long as I said it did.”

“Yes, I knew that.” Hermann brushed a kiss across his husband’s hairline.

“What do you mean you ‘knew’ that?! How could you _know_ that?”

“I’m surprised you think these things are still secret to me, Newt.”

The details of the secret were nebulous — but Hermann recalled a coil of anticipation unfurling, a cold spike of anxiety flowering then rapidly abated. At the end, there had been a kind of giddiness and camaraderie that had made the lab technicians visibly nervous as staid Dr. Gottlieb smiled at anyone and everyone for the rest of the shift.

“Well, I don’t know!” Newt sputtered; abruptly, humorously indignant. “I still have to work to hear you sometimes when we’re not in the same place.”

Hermann giggled lightly, leaning his brow against Newt’s.

It was almost certainly a consequence of having the precursors screaming in his head for the better part of a decade. Nearly ten months later, they were still adjusting as their drift connection, seeded in that first one back in the bone slums of Hong Kong, opened up and flowed unimpeded between them. Hermann’s drift, according to Newton, was familiar and grounding, synchronous, occasionally chiding; nowhere near as distracting as a hive mind of ancient and angry beings shouting their supremacy every second of every day. But the reflex of cloistering his consciousness to protect it from an invading force meant even the ghost drift was often a labored effort from his side. He was working with neurology to keep that connection open, to receive input as well as to send.

“Anyway! So, my neurology follow-up didn’t actually run all that long. I was late because I was off putting a deposit down for a new tattoo. That appointment is..,” he checked his watch. “...in four hours.”

“Okay, that still doesn’t explain why you’re awake--”

“Well, I had to leave enough time to get dressed, didn’t I--”

“--you’re already dressed and it’s not as though you took time to _shower_ \--”  
  
“Not for me, for _you,"_ he leaned back to meet Hermann's gaze. "Would you come with me?”

Hermann stared, momentarily stunned. “You want me to...”

“Please?” he said, green eyes oddly glassy. “Because, it’s in four hours -- that’s plenty of time to get breakfast, shower, and do whatever you need to do. I’m probably going to be gone for at least six hours once I’m there. And I know I’m allowed to travel without an escort now, but I’m still a little scared to leave this place without you.”

Hermann stared at him, stunned by the admission.

The debriefing had been thorough -- after their drifts, after the updated EEG readings and the CAT scans. After his statement, given privately, in the company of Hermann and Caitlin Lightcap. Marshal Mori had welcomed her old friend back with no shortage of tears on Newt’s part, warm smiles and lots of hand-holding on hers.

Officially, Dr. Newton Geiszler had given his notice and re-enlisted in the PPDC to help with the response to the events at Sydney and Mt. Fuji, bringing his medical history and recent projects under their strict purview. Redacted files and Shao Industries’ lawyers had done the rest, pasting over any yawning gaps in intel that could slip through to the public or anyone beyond the upper ranks of the Moyulan Shatterdome. The world at large was in the dark and, therefore, not a danger for Newton. But Hermann knew that the weight of everything that happened still plagued him -- and that it manifested in ways that were not always obvious until he was directly confronted with them in the form of a nightmare or a panic attack.

Separation anxiety, however… that was usually _Hermann’s_ issue.

“And yet you managed to do it on Thursday,” he replied.

“Uhhhh, not really,” Newt said, almost sheepish. “Vik and Amara came with me.”

“You took two cadets out of the shatterdome to go to a tattoo parlor?!” Hermann blurted out, suddenly awake and vertical. He ignored the twinge in his hip as he sat back, caging Newton’s waist with his knees.

“I needed someone who knew where it was!” he retorted. “Also they’re rangers, not cadets. Well, one and a half rangers, considering Amara’s on more of a J-tech, R-and-D path. And, technically, _they_ took _me_ off-base to get milk tea and a chocolate croissant. The tattoo parlor was conveniently located next door.”

“You didn’t…”

More sheepishness.

“...they were in the foyer ten minutes max. And I didn’t _do_ anything! They ambled in when I was talking with the artist,” he paused. “Vik _may_ be designing something for when she turns eighteen. Her choice! I didn’t have any input on that… at all.”

Well. That explained where the camaraderie had come from.

“How many milk teas did you buy for each of them?” he asked.

“No more than three.” Newton patted the side of his waist. “You’re going to exacerbate your hip sitting that way and mine’s starting to hurt just looking at you -- turn over.”

Hermann smiled, tipping over until they were both on their sides. “You said that it’s going to be six hours?”

Newton nodded, fingering the placket on his shirt. “At least. I’m getting the rest of my back filled in -- hence the snazzy button-up. It’s a large piece, lots of lines, lots of shading. Will you come with me?”

Hermann lowered his gaze to Newt's shirt, rubbing his thumb across the spot where Yamarashi lay underneath the cotton sleeve.

“Could we perhaps have some coffee first?”

Newton grinned, bounding up from the mattress. “Hell yes!”

\--

The tattoo parlor was indeed next to a cafe that served bubble tea. The vibrant pastels at the front of the cafe blended seamlessly with the vibrant neon in the front of the tattoo shop.

The artist, Xuesong, smiled as they were introduced and patted Hermann’s cheek in a way that may have been overly familiar, but for the full hug she pulled Newton into. Hermann took the liberty of peeking inside Newt’s folder as they chatted over their last meeting. Newton’s drawings were fluid curves with a decidedly cooler palette compared with the warm tones of the kaiju that populated his upper torso. Blues and blacks and grays against the red and gold with numeric text and familiar lines that mimicked a medical read out.

She slid the drawings over the light pad on her table a page at a time, side by side with her own renderings. An amalgam of the two was summarily traced onto a transfer, then on to Newton’s back as he lay on the padded leather table.

“Are you quite comfortable?” Xuesong asked.

“I’m all set,” he smiled, reassuring, a glimmer of enthusiasm. More anticipation.

It had been nearly ten years since Newt’s last tattoo and their shared drift was full of fond memories of needles being dragged through his skin that Hermann could access whenever he wanted to.

He had never particularly _wanted_ to.

The pain wasn’t the issue -- he had endured that. Being the focus of specialists and people with sharp implements -- that was an ancient horror for _both_ of them. And the steady buzzing of stigma rotary guns in his dreams was almost a comfort compared with the tools the precursors had used to engineer and control the kaiju.

The panic in his throat was therefore irrational and inconvenient -- Hermann swallowed it, turned his gaze to the framed prints and designs that lined the walls. There were no kaiju this time, no precursors. Just bottles of ink, the smell of alcohol, sweeping curves and lines, cut through with lines of numeric code in black, blocky typeface. He held his breath as the first lines were imprinted into his partner’s skin via thousands of micro-punctures, wincing inwardly at the phantom sting along his Latissimus dorsi muscles.

_Hermann. Atmen Sie. Go get a milk tea._

Hermann smiled, relief flooding him.

Sending had never been an issue and direct contact through the ghost drift was more common now. The signals and impressions comforting compared with what Hermann had been able to receive from Newton before — those had been more cries of anguish cluttered with malicious interference. More importantly, Newton had felt his distress through the drift. That was enough to make his heart stall in his chest as he eyed his partner still facing away from him on the table.

“I’m just going to pop next door for a moment,” he voiced, redundantly, gripping his cane as he headed for the front door. “I won’t be long.”

_Get me one too!_

\--

It ended up being seven hours, eight altogether by the time they returned to the Shatterdome that night.

The curves and lettering of the design were mottled by the transparent dressings as they undressed for bed. Hermann stepped in close as Newton washed up in the bathroom sink, humming a tune that his husband couldn’t quite place.

“It hurts,” Hermann murmured. Not a question.

“Awesome sunburn phase,” Newton echoed. “But this _is_ the largest piece I’ve ever had done all at once and it’s on my spine, so… yeah, it’s a bit intense.”

Hermann nodded, brushing his lips along the shoulder closest to him. “I suppose you’ll be sleeping belly down tonight.”

“For the next two nights at least,” Newt smirked. “The bandages are supposed to stay on for--”

“72 hours,” Hermann nodded. “I remember.”

The sense memory of the wet healing was overlaid with Newton’s own feelings of fascination, the pang of longing from being unable to see them as they purged lymph and ink, the mixture reduced to sludge by time and thermodynamics. Hermann’s own nausea was a distant echo, swamped by years and mixed memories through the drift.

“Are you going to be sick this time?” he teased.

“I technically wasn’t sick _last time,_ if you recall.”

"You got nauseous. It's fluids--"

"I've been doing kaiju dissections for the past year, Newton! I am more than tolerant of a little fluid."

"Except it's not going to be _a little_ fluid. This is my largest tattoo--"

He cut his husband off with a kiss, pushing the burning (and talk of fluids) to the back of his mind.

\--  
  
Hermann did not get sick. He _did_ shove Newton into the shower afterward to wash the thick residue away himself. He hovered in the doorway for the majority of activity, giving his own anxiety time to breathe and engaging in initially covert, then playful (and mutual) voyeurism.

On the fourth night, after still another day in the lab of watching his husband attempt to nonchalantly scrape his clothed back against plaster walls and tall pieces of equipment, Hermann rubbed lotion into the newly revealed and slightly peeling designs. Newt was laying belly down on their bed, _Dr Strangelove_ playing on the tablet screen. The colors were vibrant without the pink of inflamed skin underneath them, complementary to the warmer designs that enveloped them. Hermann could feel himself reliving those memories in the chair when Newt finally spoke.

“You’ve got questions.”

“Did you pick that up through the drift or because you know me?”

“A bit of both, probably,” he laughed into the mattress. “Does it matter?”

Hermann smiled, thumbing the area where Knifehead’s tail swept across blue waves and curvature. The previous patterns had served to amplify a subject -- Yamarashi, Atticon, Trespasser.  For this piece, the setting itself was the subject, space without the object.

“The Anteverse,” he said, unsure if this was anticipation, the drift connection, or the product of his rapidly associative brain (or Newton’s for that matter). “This is what you saw?”

Newton looked up from the screen, brushing his thumb across to pause the film.

“You don’t remember?” he asked, oddly serious.

“Some at the edges,” he replied. “I confess, I was... rather narrowly focused at the time.”

The surroundings were an afterthought. He had been seeing them in his nightmares for years. His consciousness had grappled for Newton instead — first intent on finding him in the labyrinthine construct of their mutual memories built to shelter him from the precursors, then on getting him out.

“A small part of it. Just at the end there,” he said. “The code along my spine is the PONS data from that last time -- Tendo and Liwen were nice enough to give me a copy of the print-out. And the lines at the base are--“  
  
“--the wave patterns from your EEG,” he finished, a lump in his throat as he registered the dual wave -- steady electrical patterns diverged then overlapping, nearly one. “Yours and mine.”

Their last drift, the one where he had finally managed to retrieve Newton and help him break the surface for good. He remembered holding on for dear life in the shared space of their neural link and tearing off the PONS apparatus as the link faded. He remembered the words Newt had babbled after, collapsed in Hermann’s arms, clutching the way he had clung to his partner after that first, ill-conceived solo drift. A hand out in the dark. The first one he’d seen since his long, lonely nightmare had kicked off.  
  
“This is a road map home.”

Newt nodded.

“I left this area clean for more than ten years,” he said, sitting up to face Hermann. “Well, _less_ if we want to break it down to the time I was actually awake. I didn’t know what for until a few weeks ago. It just hit me.”

Newton’s art had always been intuitive; intense flights of fancy driven by manic fervor that led to his first stick and poke in the biology lab, the first kaiju, the full sleeves and upper body ink. Hermann knew it all now as easily as he knew his own memories -- the inward battle to process, to understand, to wed meaning to the awful and make it sublime.

“That’s… rather ...” Words failed him, signals and sensation taking over. 

Newton smiled as the warmth of the connection flowed through them both. Hermann slid his arms around his husband's waist as he moved closer, lips parting easily as they slanted wetly over his. Message received. 

_You know..._

“I am _not_ getting you tattooed, darling," Hermann answered aloud.

Newton laughed. “Fair enough.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to [WaldosAkimbo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaldosAkimbo/pseuds/WaldosAkimbo) for their [_amazing back piece of Newton's tattoo_](https://newmannassemblyrequired.tumblr.com/post/180722067831/commission-done-for-im-almost-certain-this-is). Better than I could have imagined.
> 
>  **Atmest du, Schatzi. Bitte./Atmen Sie.** = "Breathe, honey. Please./Breathe." 
> 
> Tattoos and bubble tea go together -- [so sayeth irisbleufic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075605/chapters/2160145), so say we all. Also, no room in the story for it, but Newton's post-rescue babbling at Hermann absolutely included "marry me" and "where are my glasses?"

**Author's Note:**

> Newton’s adventures in wet healing are inspired by my most recent tattoo. The tattoos on his right and left shoulder blades are the two kaiju defeated by solo pilots (Stacker Pentecost and Raleigh Becket) after their drift partners were killed. 
> 
> Also I made a [playlist ](https://open.spotify.com/user/7o1edie7i5dbajoojzu8h5p8q/playlist/5oo21RQkF9Dj3KtJsmJ6GT?si=WkCRTPvvQXucHigPLhMtSA).


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